Streetcar

A recent recommendation to the Boise City Council has awoken an issue that was, a few years ago, among the most hotly debated topics in Idaho’s capital city – should downtown Boise get a streetcar? But Mike Journee, a spokesman for Mayor Dave Bieter, says a committee led by a city engineer has not yet recommended that Boise actually build a streetcar line.

Five years ago Boise Mayor David Bieter proposed a $60 million trolley for downtown Boise. When federal funds for the project didn't come through, the project was put on indefinite hold.

The Treasure Valley actually had an electric railway that linked Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Nampa, Caldwell, and Middleton many years ago. That story unfolds in a new pictorial history book called the “Treasure Valley’s Electric Railway.” Barbara Perry Bauer is one of the authors and she says the trolley started more than 100 years ago.